A long, dark forest...Gawain 2018

Gawain

November 2018

There was a long dark forest,

wicked woods, wild, wind-blown and whistling woods,

Where twirling leaves trembled on tall, terrifying trees,

With treacherous twigs to tempt you to a terrible fate

a dragon in a castle....

We are having a wintry Gawain and the Green Knight season this month

 

visiting Wooden Spoon royalty

The Sir Gawain project saw a lively and successful weekend. There was painting, a new artwork from Sue Prince (with mass community participation, paintbrushes and pennies), walks, talks and excitements from Clive Foden, and  some 40 people, and more, joining us (Creeping Toad, Stone and Water and Sarah Males) on Saturday to make a cast of medieval characters on wooden spoons at the Foxlowe Arts Centre in Leek

Gawain might find new foes, or new friends, in Leek

I am also working with the children of St Bartholomew’s C of E Primary School, Longnor, and Manifold C of E Academy, Warslow, to write the further adventures of Gawain. These are taking shape in exciting and unpredictable ways and now we are making puppets to animate our narrative poems….

a journey through an enchanted wood

But the long road home was waiting

A perilous path through the wild wastes

Where a wild wood grew over the hilltops

Through the dales

There were terribly twisty trees 

Where owls rested on the branches

And wary wolves watched from the shade

There were robbers in those woods

But fighting fierce foxes and

Struggling bravely to battle big, bad badgers

Gawain finally made it through the fierce forest

(Manifold)

Gawain crossing hills

Through the woods in safety

Gawain stopped by a cool, relaxing pool,

The home,

But he did not know it

Of mysterious mermaids,

secretive mermaids

Who can sing, or scream, as loud as trumpets

Mean as monsters

Swift as snakes,

With claws as sharp as sharks’ teeth

they would drag you down, down to the depths

Down to your drowned death

And of those mermaids there was one

Who had once asked the fairies of the forest

For a friendly favour, a wild and wonderful wish,

To become the most mysterious, the most marvelous,

The most powerful mermaid,

Ever

 

the Mermaid Pool at Blakemere

Gawain rested by the water, trailing his tired toes in

The cool refreshing water

When he felt a tug on his leg,

A hand pulling him into the dark water,

And down, down, down….

(Longnor)

So many people to thank here - all those artists, puppeteers and poets and Borderland Voices  who are coordinating my Gawain workshops in the schools

Toadwords creeping out...

 

Toads are breaking out all over

- or maybe breaking in?

Over the last year, I've been contributing to various other blogs and journals. I thought a list of opening paragraphs and links might prove interesting….

Wild Storytelling

June 2015: a piece on storytelling and landscapes for Highland Environment Network's newsletter issue on environmental art

It begins….

Telling tales of wonder and delight, stories to enchant, intrigue and captivate. Telling tales to draw people into the landscapes, plants and animals around them. Or at least that's what I hope I do. It's certainly what I set out to do but as with most creative activities we share with the public (or pursue as individuals) in the end, like water and weeds, the creativity finds its own path....

"…on this day that hopes for rainbows"

Using the environment to inspire poetry

May 2015, a piece for the Natural Connections OutdoorLearning blog.

It begins…

We started with a venue we all valued and a belief that children’s language grew more by direct experience than by just reading, listening and being told about things. Then we stirred into the mix Simon Armitage’s recent translation of “Gawain and the Green Knight” with its beautiful sense of rhythm and movement. A pinch of Michael Porpurgo’s Gawain followed and a grant from the Clore Duffield Foundation coordinated by Mid-Pennine Arts and we were ready to bake, with myself  - environmental storyteller, artist and general creator-of-celebrations - as the spoon that stirs the pot.

A River In The Classroom worksheets

Musician Steve Brown and myself produced a set of worksheets for the Ribble Rivers Trust inspired by the workshops that were followed through "The Hatching" blogs in 2015 and 2016

  

You can download a version of the worksheets here

A River in the Classroom worksheets

There are 5 worksheets in this set offering everything from how to compose your own watery soundscapes to techniques for building your own folding river. While these are river-specific activities the techniques and principles involved could be applied to a much wider range of themes.

Over the hills and far away….

July 2015, and I had the excitement of reciting one of my poems for a film about fell-running by Jimmy Hyland.  The film is a lovely few minutes of watching, so please tune in, relax and imagine yourself up in the hills….

I hope the film link works!

Pym Chair above the Dale of Goyt

 A broad broken bow of a bridge:

June 2014, another piece about working with poetry, this time for an Environmental Education journal based in Brazil. The link will take you to a copy of the article. Look at the rest of the journal - but you might need to some Spanish or maybe Portuguese!

http://www.periodicos.ulbra.br/index.php/txra/article/view/1132

It begins…

A broad, broken bow of a bridge:

using classic literature and outdoor sites to inspire poetry with children

Once upon a time…

This story began some 700 years ago when a scribe in a monastery started writing - or recording - the narrative poem that was to become known as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Mixing Pagan imagery with Christian morality tale and straightforward heroic adventure, Gawain has survived the centuries since then and stands now as a classic text of early English literature

Packhorse Bridge at Wycoller Country Park

Fanfares Of Trumpets And Galloping Knights!

Our "Gawain" project moved into performance today! It was magnificent and I'll post more photos and comments over the next few days but just now I wanted to share some images of the site and words form the final performance....

Setting the scene:

After "Gawain and the Green Knight", came "Five Children"......

 Here are just a few extracts from the main poem...our heroes are Five Children, on a quest through the Perilous Forest to find their parents frozen by the Witch Victoria

Then, dripping mud,

Cold and wet and miserable

The children stood

On the edge of a stream

Where one long stone crossed the river

One long rock over

A waterfall like a mountain

Deep, dirty and dark

Dashing down into danger

out into the dark woods

Later, the adventurers arrive at the Palace of the Woodland Queen, Quire ( the willow tunnel and sculptures are by Jeff and Heather Allen)

Deep in the woods,

There is a wonderful palace.

A wild, woven willow hall

With windows looking out onto the world,

Decorated with jewels and gems,

Beside a swamp where

The tadpoles wriggle and spotted frogs jump.

There is a magical throne there

Where the King and Queen of the Forest sit.

After various adventures, they reach the Witch's home, hidden in the ruins

Carefully creeping, up precarious stairs,

Sneaking slowly past

Giant cobwebs and giant spiders,

And through

Smells of rotten eggs and old fish,

Blood and death

It is cold.

Cold as ice on an Arctic winter's day,

The children's breath steams in misty clouds

In the final showdown....

There are pots and pans and pennies,

Bottles for potions and lotions and poisons,

Skulls on shelves and bones in the biscuit tin,

A red pot for mixing blood drinks.

There is a copper kettle for carrot tea

And bowls of dead fish,

And pine cone toothbrushes,

And a stone bottle with stone water

There is a horn that blows silently and summons bats,

Ice diamonds, spelling crystals to freeze thieves,

A golden bracelet for trapping arms, squeezing tight, crushing bones.

Gathering anger,

Gathering spells,

Fingers flexing and filling with fierceness,

Victoria the Witch stands up,

Enchantments crackling and sparking

From hair and nose and fingertips.

But as to what happens in the very end - you'll have to wait and see"

(a beautiful Lady Toad who started the day for me)

Gawain, 2013: the adventure begins

and Gawain has probably been sidelined already...he has had adventures, we haven't!

An exciting and damp day at Wycoller Country Park has given our "narrative poem"project a big boost with ideas about places where adventures might happen, characters we might use and encounters that might befall our heroes. Our aim is to create a story-poem whose process has encouraged children to extend their vocabulary, to enjoy poetry with rhythm and alliteration but not worrying about rhyme, and to meet other ways of structuring stories. While our story develops a musician (Hannah Kidd) and Ruth Evans, a textile artist, will both work with the groups to take the story into othe rmedia. In a couple of weeks we'll go back to Wycoller Country Park and tell the story in public for the very first time....

Everything is still open, but we thought you might enjoy some of our first images and ideas....

We scribbled ideas onto sheets and had a washing line of pages that we could move around which was fine as long as it was sunny! Our aim is to write a collective adventure poem, set in  roughly medieval world and using the places we visit, the things we find and our own wild imaginations...

The beginning of the adventure, maybe?

BEGINNING

A cloudy, rainy, stormy day

When only ducks and slugs are out

Dripping rain, dripping children

Soaking through their shoes

But a day hoping for rainbows

Characters we might use

MEN-AT-ARMS

Knucklehead knights,

Strong and brave with sword and spear and shield

Mighty, magnificent men-at-arms

With mace and mail and morning star

Monkeys or mammoths on their shields.

Quiet as moths and mice and mean as midges

They serve the King and Queen of the Woods

And are not very bright

The Wycoller landscape gave us settings...

RUINS

The rugged rocky ruins,

Old, ancient and rough

Thin windows, huge fireplace

that will hold

A whole company warm

Or roasting

TREES

Tall trees grow in those woods

Towering, toppling, tumbling trees

A tangle of leaves and branches and bark

Old, old trees and new saplings,

A world of green and brown

There are children in the trees

They hid in the leaves

Under the leaves

For so long, for too long

And they became green and 

As secret and silent as the trees themselves

Partners in the adventure:

Roughlee Primary School

Whitefield Infant and Nursery School

Mid-Pennine Arts

Wycoller Country Park

with funding from the Clore Duffield Foundation

Gawain?

A new Gawain - or a different Green Knight?

our stories will use the atmospheres and
settings of Wycoller Country Park

Some 700 years ago, possibly in the now lost Dieulacres Abbey near Leek, an anonymous scribe wrote down a narrative poem of heroes and temptation, enchantment, deceit, chivalry and naughtiness. A single manuscript survived the centuries and now Gawain and the Green Knight it is one of the gems of early English literature

Packhorse Bridge at Wycoller

Inspired by the story of Gawain and the recent translations and retellings by Simon Armitage and Michael Morpurgo,  Mid-Pennine Arts, Roughlee Primary School, Whitefield Infant School and myself have embarked upon an exciting heroic adventure of our own.

Playing with the sounds and rhythms of words, inventing our own characters and working in Wycoller Country Park, we're writing our own new alliterative, narrative poems

Our stories will grow, patterns of words will change, ideas will become music (with Hannah Jones), adventures will become textiles (with Ruth Evans) and everything will go…wherever it needs to go!

First session yesterday: telling the story of Gawain to get us started, making the story with people, howling like the wolves in the woods, falling in moats, being locked in dungeons…..

More instalments will follow!

First character studies:

the wet-weather witch watches 

from windows, waving 

at passers-by

In a wild wood, wild boars snort and snuffle in the leaves,

Horses run through the trees,

And in a dark cave, deep in the woods,

At the foot of a hill lives a black bear with her babies.

Every day the bears bathe in a raging, rushing, rattling river

One knight was riding through the forest and saw

beyond the trees,

beyond the woods

The ruins of a castle

And the golden broken remains of a temple

I have worked on Gawain projects before - most notably a puppet performance for the Flash TeaPot Parade a few years ago (you can work it out - the village itself is called Flash, not necessarily a description of the various teapots)

This new project is supported by
the Clore Duffield Foundation

Duchy of Lancaster
Warburtons